The panel will address the ways in which medievalists have created, or can create, a dialogue with the work of the philosopher Alain Badiou. What is – or could be -- the impact on medieval studies of Badiou's radical reframing of ontology? What do medievalists make of his insistence that philosophy must acknowledge its dependence on four extra-philosophical conditions of thinking, namely science, politics, art and love? What of his dispute with the linguistic turn in philosophical thinking and in the humanities' disciplines in general, a turn that has had a profound effect on recent medievalist work of the past two decades? How does Badiou figure as a "count-as-one" in medieval studies? The deadline for this panel has been extended to 9/27/2010.